"Ill get the door!"

At the sound of Sams voice Blaines eyes flew open.  Shit, he had slept for way longer than he had intended to, and now Kurt was here and Blaine was decidedly not ready.  Earlier this afternoon Blaine had been on the edge of canceling his second coffee date (or coffee meeting, or whatever it was) with Kurt, given how much his leg was hurting him, but then Sam convinced him to just take it easy for the rest of the day and invite Kurt over to their place later.  Kurt had agreed without asking why.  Blaine felt a little odd about not coming out and telling Kurt why he didnt want to leave the house tonight, but he figured hed slip it into their conversation without drawing too much attention to the problem. He knew he wasnt going to be able to fool Kurt into thinking he was back to normal, but at the same time, he really wished he could. 

Blaine sighed. Bad leg or not, he had thought he could pull off a nice evening with Kurt.  Blaine had planned on taking a quick nap, then straightening up the apartment and getting some snacks ready, as well as spending some time for the necessary showering and obsessing over what to wear, but apparently none of that was going to happen.  He sat up and grimaced, rubbing his thigh.  Yup, it still hurt.  He had pushed a little too hard at physical therapy this morning, and now he was going to pay for it. 

Blaine heard Sam open the door and greet Kurt.  "Blaine fell asleep, his leg was really killing him.  I think the meds he takes when it gets like that knock him out.  But its cool, I can give you a tour and hell be out in a minute."

Oh my god, Sam, please stop, Blaine pleaded silently.  He had to find a clean shirt and get out there before Sam said anything even more embarrassing.  At least Sam seemed to have let go of his reluctance about Kurt.  Sam could tell how much seeing Kurt again meant to Blaine, and like he always was when something was important to Blaine, Sam was on board.

"So this is the living room.  Check out the comfy couch - its great for watching tv.  And you can pull this thing over and put your feet up on it, its awesome."  Sam was apparently sharing his love for their giant ottoman with Kurt.  At least that was better than a blow by blow about his medical history.

"Heres the kitchen.  It used to have one of those breakfast bars with tall stools, but Blaines aunt let us take it out so wed have room for a table.  You cant reach a breakfast bar from a wheelchair."

Forget changing his clothes, time was clearly of the essence. "Sam?  Could you please come here?" Blaine called.

Either Sam didnt hear him or, more likely, he was having too much fun tormenting Blaine.  He continued telling Kurt about the apartment.  "It belongs to Blaines Aunt Cathy.  She bought it so her kids could live here when they were in college, but then she kicked them out because Blaine is her favorite."

"That is not what happened!  Sam!"  Blaine swung his feet of the bed and tried to stand up, but groaned as pain shot up his right leg. 

Sam finally appeared in the doorway.  "Dude, dont do that, youll just hurt it more."  Sam made a face as Blaine hopped over to where his cane was propped against his desk chair.  "Kurts here."

"I could tell.  You know, Sam, you didnt have to tell him all that stuff about me," Blaine said, running his fingers through his hair.

"What, about Crispin and Campbell getting evicted for you?"  Sam grinned, then went to Blaines closet and pulled out a red polo, holding it up for Blaines approval.

"They did not get evicted, and their names are Carter and Cara."  Blaine took the polo from Sam and quickly traded it for the NYU t-shirt he had been wearing.  As Sam briskly brushed his shoulders and straightened his collar, it occurred to him that Sam might have been spending too much time binge watching Downton Abbey.  He supposed he should be grateful - not every college student had their own valet.

"You look great. Come on."   Sam crouched down in front of where Blaine had sat back down on the bed, turning to look at him over his shoulder.  "Piggyback?"

"Sam, no..."

"Blaine, Kurts waiting for you, and you know youre not walking on that leg right now.  If it wasnt hurting like crazy you would have been out there already.  And I guarantee youre not about to roll yourself out in your chair."  Sam glanced over at the wheelchair in its spot in the corner, doing its job well as a place to throw random books and clothes. "Unless you want to scoot down the hallway on your butt, Im your best option."

"I dont suppose we could pretend Im not here?  Ask him to come back tomorrow?"  But Blaine was already grabbing on to Sams shoulders and letting him pull his legs around his waist, wincing just a little as Sam carefully took hold of his right leg.  Sam was right.  Given his current options, at least this one didnt scream weak and sickly.  Maybe he could go for playful.

As Sam bounced him down the hallway Blaine peeked over his shoulder, spotting Kurt sitting primly on one end of the couch, magazine in hand.  Blaine hoped it was one of his, not some crazy thing Sam brought home.

Kurt looked up and smiled as Sam deposited Blaine on the couch next to Kurt.  “You really know how to make an entrance.”

Blaine straightened himself out, trying to sit normally on the overly soft couch.  His heart flipped as he looked up.  Kurt's crisp blue shirt was making his eyes shine, and his chestnut hair artfully swooped up over his forehead.  He took a deep breath, linking his hands together to stop them from shaking.  “Thanks for coming over.  I'm sorry I had to cancel our coffee date.”

“You didn't cancel it, you just shifted it a little bit.”

“And changed the menu,” Sam said, setting a tray with two glasses and a plate of cookies on the ottoman.  “Tea is served,” he announced grandly in what was probably supposed to be an English accent.  “Well, lemonade, actually.”

“This looks great, Sam,” Kurt said, reaching over for a glass.  “I love lemonade.”  He took a polite sip and grinned.  “It's delicious.”

“Thanks – I made it myself.”  Sam said proudly. 

“It's a nice change from coffee,” Kurt commented, taking another sip.

“Yeah, well, I have a lot of trouble sleeping, so I stay away from caffeine,” Sam explained, holding out the plate of cookies.  “Try one of these, they're lavender shortbread.”

Blaine definitely had to speak to Sam about his Masterpiece Theater obsession.  This was getting out of hand.  “Where did you even get those cookies?”

“The tea shop a few blocks over.  They had scones and stuff too, but I figured that was kind of messy.  I ran over there while you were getting your beauty sleep.”  Sam got up and tousled Blaine's hair.  “See, I'm not completely useless.”  Sam winked and took off down the hall.

Blaine sighed.  “I don't know what to say.  Sam's been watching a lot of Downton Abbey lately.  I think he wants to be an English count.  Or a butler, I'm not sure.”

“I think he cares about you,” Kurt said softly, his eyes wide. 

“I know.”  Blaine bit his lip, not sure how to put this.  “I care about him too.  A lot.  I never would have made it to New York without Sam.”

Kurt put his lemonade glass down and grasped his hands together, paying very close attention to his cuticles.  He looked up at Blaine.  “Are you two, um, together?”

“What, like dating?  No, definitely not.”  Blaine smiled.  ”Blam is still completely platonic.”

Kurt wrinkled his nose.  Blaine knew he had always been a little confused about the whole “Blam” business.  “Sorry, you just seem to fit so well together, I had to ask.”

“Don't be sorry.  People think that all the time.”  Blaine paused, dying to know if Kurt was seeing anyone.  He didn't act like it, but he didn't want to assume.  Seemed like the right time to ask.  “What about you?”

“Me?  Am I dating Sam?”  Kurt teased.

“Now you're just being mean,” Blaine complained.  “You know what I'm trying to ask.”

“No, I'm not seeing anyone.”  Kurt replied firmly.  Thank goodness, Blaine thought to himself. “And I can't help it if I'm a little jealous of your bromance with Mr. Evans.”

 “Well, now we can all be friends,” Blaine said seriously.  “I'm willing to share him, if you're interested.” 

“Oh my god, Blaine, you cannot have just said that,” Kurt blushed furiously.

“As friends, you dope,” Blaine insisted.  “He's a really awesome friend, he'd be good for you.”

“What do you mean?”

Blaine shrugged.  “It just seems like you could use a friend.”  Blaine hoped that wasn't going too far.  But he had noticed that not once in the past few days had Kurt mentioned anyone except his dad, and knowing that he wasn't in touch with Rachel anymore frankly worried him.

“But I have you now, right?” 

Blaine's heart twisted at the tentative tone in Kurt's voice.  “You can have more than one friend, you know.”  He scooted closer to Kurt on the couch, pulling his good leg up underneath him and taking one of Kurt's hands in his.  “But yes, you do have me.”

Kurt smiled and squeezed his hand.  “Good.”  He took a breath, and then blurted out “Wait, you are single, right?  I mean, you said you weren't dating Sam, but…”

“Yes, silly, I'm single.”  Blaine reassured him.  It was sweet that Kurt was worried – no, in fact, it was awesome that Kurt was worried. 

Kurt rolled his shoulders and looked around the room, apparently ready for a change of topic.  Blaine was relieved, actually, since he was about two seconds away from kissing Kurt, and it was probably a little too soon for that.  Although he was beginning to believe it might be a possibility at some point, and the thought made him giddy.  Blaine contented himself with stroking his thumb over the back of Kurt's hand, enjoying the softness of his skin.  He wondered if he still used the same moisturizer, or if he had changed things up over time.  And whether he still took such good care of the skin on other parts of his body.

“You have a really nice place.”  Kurt commented, pulling Blaine out of his contemplation of Kurt's skin.  “I like the décor.  A far cry from impoverished college student chic.”

“Thanks.  I guess you heard it's my aunt's?”

“Yeah.  Is she the one I met at Christmas that time, the diplomat?”

“Yup, that's her.  My two older cousins both went to college in New York City, so they got this apartment for them.  She thought the youngest one would want to use it too, but then Catrina decided to go to Stanford. Since none of them needed it anymore, she said I could use it.  It has been a real lifesaver, living this close to school.”

“Tell me your cousins don't all have names that start with ‘C.'”

“I'm afraid I can't do that,” Blaine admitted.

Kurt laughed.  “At least your parents didn't give you a ‘C' name.  Hey, is that why Cooper…?”

“No, at least I don't think so.  Cooper's a few years older than Carter, anyway, so that wouldn't have worked.”  Blaine smirked.  “It's not like you can talk.”

“What do you mean?”

“Burt and Kurt?  Come on, you guys rhyme!”  They laughed together for a minute, and then Kurt took their entwined hands and rested them on his lap.

“So tell me, how did you and Sam wind up as roommates?”

So they were going to go there.  It really wasn't a big deal, Blaine didn't know why he was so hesitant to talk about what had happened over the past few years.  He was obviously going to have to explain everything to Kurt, if he wanted this, whatever it was, to work.  And he definitely wanted it to work.   “Okay, are you ready for the story?”  He could see by the concerned expression in Kurt's eyes that he knew Blaine was nervous.

“If you want to tell me.”

“I do.”  Blaine took a long breath and let it out, winding his fingers together with Kurt's.  “Well, you know how I was when you last saw me.  My prognosis wasn't very promising, nothing was getting better, and everything hurt.  But after a couple of months, even though it had seemed like nothing was happening, I realized that my leg was getting better.  Just the tiniest bit easier to move, just a little bit less painful.  And I was feeling marginally less miserable, too.  There's a chicken and the egg problem there that I don't really know the answer to, but in any case, everything just seemed a little bit less hopeless.”

“Blaine,” Kurt breathed out, sliding closer until they were touching, shoulders and arms together, Blaine's knee pressed against Kurt's thigh.  “I'm so sorry….”

“No, don't, you don't have anything to be sorry for.”  Blaine swallowed hard.  “Let me just keep going, okay?”  Kurt nodded, gripping his hand tighter.  “So at some point, Sam showed up.  He had spent that summer and fall after the accident at home in Kentucky, taking courses at a community college.  But he came back to Lima after Christmas, and he started visiting me at the rehab center.  I was a total asshole to him at first, I told him to leave me alone, go away, all that crap, but he acted as if he didn't even hear me.  Eventually I guess I just got tired of arguing with him.”  Blaine huffed out a laugh. 

“Classic Sam,” Kurt commented softly.  “He pretends to be oblivious but he knows what he's doing.”

“Yeah, he does,” Blaine agreed.  “Anyway, by the time I finally came home from rehab in February, Sam was around all the time.  Ryder had introduced him to a tutor that specialized in dyslexia, he was taking another course at Lima Community College, and he kept coming over and asking me to help him study.”

“And then one thing led to another….” Kurt teased.

“Exactly.  Before I knew it, he was making me watch superhero movies and arranging New Directions sleepovers.”

“I would love to have seen that.”

“I'm sure you can imagine it.  Remember the sleepover Kitty had after the shooting at McKinley?  It was like that, except now we were all even more traumatized.  And…”

“And what?” 

“And Kitty wasn't there.”  Blaine blinked rapidly.  “I'm sorry, I really can't talk about Kitty right now, can we put her on the list?”

“Of course,” Kurt said softly.  He lay his head gently on Blaine's shoulder, and Blaine's heart raced as he turned his head and breathed in the smell of Kurt's cologne.  Kurt was quiet for a minute, letting Blaine relax and center himself again.

“Want to keep talking about last year?” Kurt asked, and Blaine nodded, Kurt's hair tickling his nose.  “When did you start seeing a therapist?”

“Around March or so.  Sam sort of convinced me to do it.”

“I figured.”

“He had been seeing a counselor since right after the accident.  His mom is a social worker, did you know that?  Anyway, they insisted, and they found him someone really nice in Kentucky.  Sam still calls her every once in a while.”

“Guess that bus accident was good business for therapists,” Kurt commented wryly.

“Tell me about it.” 

“So is this when you started planning your new major?”

“Yeah, well, I finally came to terms with the fact that a performance major wasn't going to work out for me, which was hard.  But then Sam told me he was coming to New York too, and I knew I had to get my act together.  So I contacted NYU, and they have been really awesome about everything.  Not just the major, but making all kinds of allowances for my situation.”

“Like what?”  Kurt asked.

“Well, last summer I took an online course, and I'm going to do the same thing this summer, which is obviously great since I don't have to physically go anywhere.  And they let me miss a lot more classes then you'd ordinarily be allowed to do, as long as I keep up with the work, and check in with the professors online, which was really helpful when it snowed so much last winter.  It's ridiculously hard to get around New York in a wheelchair.  There's also a bus, although I don't like it very much.”

“Why not?  I take the bus all the time.”

“Kurt,” Blaine pleads.  “It's just embarrassing.  It's one of those special busses for disabled people, with a ramp that goes down so you can get on in your wheelchair.”  He ran his hand through his hair and sighed.  “But most of the time Sam came along with me, so that really helped.  He's great at not letting me take myself too seriously.”

“Sam comes to class with you?  What, is he like a seeing eye dog?”

“Don't joke, I think my parents would have hired him to move to New York with me if he hadn't already been planning on it.”  Blaine laughed at Kurt's appalled expression.  “I kid you not, they threw him a party like you wouldn't believe when he got into NYU, they were so happy.”

“Wait – Sam goes to NYU too?”

“Surprise, right?  Turns out, with the right tutoring and accommodations for his dyslexia, Sam is a really good student.  He had actually started turning things around senior year at McKinley, but no one really noticed because of his awful SAT score.”  Blaine smiled, rocking his shoulder into Kurt's.  “And of course, he's got a really compelling personal story.”

“I still have a copy of that video you made for him, you know,” Kurt said.  “I remember when Santana showed it to me.  It made me love you so much.”

Blaine blinked as his throat closed up, not sure what to say.  He and Kurt hadn't even been together when he made that video for Sam – it was even before their infamous hookup at Mr. Schue's non-wedding. 

“I didn't know you ever saw it,” he said softly. 

They were silent for a few minutes, Blaine letting his head rest against Kurt's.  Finally Kurt spoke up again.  “So, you guys come to New York, move into this fabulous Greenwich Village apartment, and the rest is history?”

“That's the story.”  Blaine chuckled.  “And you'd know it if you ever looked at Facebook.  There are a dozen pictures on there of Sam wearing the NYU sweatshirt my mom bought him.”

“She bought you a matching one, didn't she?”

“Oh yes, she certainly did.  And ones for herself and my dad.  Actually,” Blaine sat up a little, looking at Kurt, “you'd know a lot of this stuff if you looked at Facebook.  Did you really not know all this, or were you just humoring me?”  Blaine felt a little funny as he watched Kurt's face.

“No, Blaine, I swear, I really am a social media freak – I haven't been on Facebook in years, truly.”  Kurt grabbed both of Blaine's hands in his.  “I wouldn't make you go through all this if I already knew, I promise.”

“Okay,” Blaine said.  Apparently he still looked uncertain, because Kurt tugged on his hands until he looked at him.

“Blaine?  I stopped looking at Facebook a few months after Finn died.  It was just too much, every time I thought I had a handle on things, someone else would post their memories of him, something sad and beautiful, and it would set me off again.  So I just stopped.”

Blaine thought he was beginning to understand why Kurt seemed so lonely.  “Is that why you aren't talking to Rachel anymore?  Because of Finn?”

“Yeah, more or less,” Kurt answered sadly.

Blaine pulled his hands out of Kurt's and wrapped his arms around him, exhaling in relief when Kurt hugged him back.  They sat there together for a few minutes, Blaine resting his head against Kurt's cheek, breathing him in.  His heart ached hearing the pain in Kurt's voice.  He couldn't imagine what it would be like to lose his brother.  Cooper drove him nuts, but he still loved him like crazy.  It wasn't fair that Kurt kept losing people he loved.  Blaine concentrated on rubbing soothingly over Kurt's back, finally stilling his hands and simply holding him.

Blaine was starting to wonder if they could just stay like this forever when he heard Sam clearing his throat.  They pulled apart, Kurt's hand sliding down to take Blaine's in his again.

“Sorry to interrupt, guys, but, um, my laptop ran out of battery.”  Sam looked forlorn, a fleece blanket wrapped around his shoulders like a cape.

Blaine considered reminding Sam that he could plug his computer into the wall, but he realized that probably wasn't the whole story.  “That's okay, Sam, you don't have to keeping hiding in your room.”  Blaine looked quickly over at Kurt, who seemed content.  “Want to watch a movie with us?”

“Yeah, dude, that would be great.”

Sam cleared the tray away and plopped himself down on the couch next to Blaine, stretching his legs out as he demonstrated how well the ottoman worked as a footrest.  Kurt obediently retrieved the throw blanket from where Sam had actually put it away in the closet (“you're the tallest, Kurt, you go get it”), and they all settled down to watch The Breakfast Club, Sam happily babbling on about which of the characters matched up best with each of the New Directions.

Nestled in between his best friend and the love of his life, warm and drowsy with his head resting on Kurt's shoulder, Blaine found it hard to remember the last time he felt so happy.